The present invention relates in general to hoists and winches, and more particularly to winches utilizing fairlead structures for guiding cables.
Hoists and winches are typically employed to lift or pull heavy loads. With the popularity of off-road vehicles and all-terrain vehicles, winches are now offered either as original purchase options or after market products. A vehicle-mounted winch is commonly utilized to either pull the vehicle toward a fixed object, or to pull an object, such as a fallen tree or other debris, to clear a path.
It is a common practice in winch construction to utilize a wire rope or cable wrapped on a power-driven drum. The strength of the gears and the torque of the motor, as well as the cable diameter generally determine the load that can be safely applied between the object and the winch. In order to prevent damage to the cable, and more particularly from allowing the cable strands to be abraided or bent at sharp angles, fairlead structures are employed to facilitate the routing of the cable onto the drum. A number of rollers or smooth curved surfaces are typically employed at the entrance of the drum to provide a rolling or smooth surface and prevent abrasion or severe bending of the cable.
It is a conventional practice to fabricate the fairlead structure separate from the winch, and then bolt the parts together. This is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,929. While this allows a substantial degree of flexibility in utilizing a few models or types of fairleads with many different types of winches, the use of separate items generally increases the cost and assembly time of the winch.
Disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,047 is a winch drive mechanism in which the fairlead structure is made integral with the overall housing of the winch. Because of the manner in which this type of winch is constructed with an integral fairlead, manufacturing costs are believed to be increased, and a breakage or bending of the fairlead necessitates the replacement of the entire housing of the winch.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that a need exists for a technique for constructing a winch having integral therewith the fairlead. Another need exists for a rigid and sturdy fairlead structure which also serves as a bearing housing for the cable drum.
The present invention disclosed and claimed herein, in one, aspect thereof includes a fairlead fabricated integral with the winch structure to overcome the problems and shortcomings of the prior art winches.
In accordance with an important feature of the invention, the fairlead includes spaced-apart frame members for supporting a pair of vertical rollers and a pair of horizontal rollers to provide a rolling guide surface for the cable. The spaced-apart frame members have bores formed therein for supporting respective bearings for the cable drum. Molded plastic ring gear housings are mounted to the respective fairlead frame members. The motor ring gear housings support therein the planetary gear reduction assemblies which are driven by a DC motor attached to one ring gear housing. Attached to the other ring gear housing is a clutch assembly. The winch constructed according to the foregoing is easily assembled with fewer parts than many winches of the prior art.